Verb First
On the syntax of verb-initial languages
Published on 17. February 2005
Book
Hardback
431 pages
978-1-58811-610-9 (ISBN)
Description
This collection of papers brings together the most recent crosslinguistic research on the syntax of verb-initial languages. Authors with a variety of theoretical perspectives pursue the questions of how verb-initial order is derived, and how these derivations play into the characteristic syntax of these languages. Major themes in the volume include the role of syntactic category in languages with verb-initial order; the different mechanisms of deriving V-initial order; and the universal correlates of the order. This book should be of interest to scholars who work on theoretical approaches to word order derivation, typologists, and those who work on the particular grammars of Celtic, Zapotec, Mixtec, Polynesian, Austronesian, Mayan, Salish, Aboriginal, and Nilotic languages.
Reviews / Votes
This books presents valuable insights into the syntax of a variety of verb-initial languages and as such is a great contribution to our understanding of syntax. Accounting for word order across languages is one of the main goals of syntactic theory, yet it is the word order problems that often present the toughest challenges for syntacticians. The research represented in this book goes a long way in elucidating the issues related to a particular subset of word orders, those where the verb comes first.As such, this book not only provides an overview of the cutting-edge research on this subject, but also sets goals for future research. -- Asya Pereltsvaig, Cornell University, on Linguist List 16.2503, 2005
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Amsterdam
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 245 mm
Width: 164 mm
Weight
715 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-58811-610-9 (9781588116109)
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Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Content
1. Contributors; 2. Acknowledgments; 3. Abbreviations; 4. Introduction: When verbs come first (by Carnie, Andrew); 5. Part I. VP movement vs Head-movement; 6. What fronts?: On the VP-raising account of verb-initial order (by Chung, Sandra); 7. Coordination and constituency in St'at'imcets (Lillooet Salish) (by Davis, Henry); 8. Two derivations of VSO: A comparative study of Niuean and Tongan (by Otsuka, Yuko); 9. Force first: Clause-fronting and clause typing in San Lucas Quiavini Zapotec (by Lee, Felicia); 10. V1 and wh-questions: a typology (by Oda, Kenji); 11. Preverbal particles in verb-initial languages (by Bury, Dirk); 12. A note on predicates and heads in Irish clausal syntax (by McCloskey, James); 13. Seediq: Antisymmetry and final particles in a Formosan VOS language (by Holmer, Arthur); 14. VP-internal structure in a VOS language (by Travis, Lisa deMena); 15. Part II. Categories, Information Structure, and Prosodic factors; 16. Lexical categories, lack of inflection, and predicate-fronting in Niuean (by Massam, Diane); 17. Word order without syntactic categories: How Riau Indonesian does it (by Gil, David); 18. Nominal properties of vPs in Breton: A hypothesis for the typology of VSO languages (by Jouitteau, Melanie); 19. On the parallelism of DPs and clauses: Evidence from Kisongo Maasai (by Koopman, Hilda); 20. Ordering clitics and postverbal R-expressions in Tagalog: a unified analysis? (by Billings, Loren); 21. The syntax of Chalcatongo Mixtec: Preverbal and postverbal (by Macaulay, Monica); 22. Accounting for verb-initial order in an Australian language (by Laughren, Mary); 23. References; 24. Index